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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27352591">The Narcissist's Muse</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherBlonde/pseuds/JustAnotherBlonde'>JustAnotherBlonde</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Mirrors, Narcissism, Puppets, Sasori Mini Bang, Sasori MiniBang 2020, SasoriMiniBang, Wood carving</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:01:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,861</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27352591</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherBlonde/pseuds/JustAnotherBlonde</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>Sasori is carving a puppet.</p>
  <p>"He was smiling as he worked. He knew it, too. Couldn’t help himself. He lived for this work. This work was his life. His life was this work. <em>He</em> was this work."</p>
  <p>Sasori Mini-Bang 2020<br/><strong>Day 1 Prompt:</strong> Narcissist / <strong>Day 4 Prompt:</strong> My Muse</p>
</div>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Sasori Mini Bang</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Narcissist's Muse</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>He was smiling as he worked. He knew it, too. Couldn’t help himself. He lived for this work. This work was his life. His life was this work. <em>He</em> was this work.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A little more off the cheek. His were not prominent cheek bones. But he had to get the curve of the—what had the med-nin called it?—<em>malar prominence</em> and eye orbit as it lay beneath skin just right. So he shaved a little more wood away with his knife, sharpened not ten minutes ago on the leather strop he kept on his worktable. Blades had to be kept fresh, every stroke precise to the millimeter.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The block of wood pressed between his left hand and the anchored backboard was far from finished: its surface was rough, consisting of flat gouges where he had removed material to form a vague sphere; he had drilled two holes deep into the sphere where the eye sockets would appear and a third hole where the spinal column would have been up into the skull to allow him to hollow out the sphere, creating a shell of an appropriate thickness. For now, the surface was crisscrossed with pencil strokes marking the centerline and positions of features. These would slowly be removed as he smoothed away unwanted edges.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Taking his attention away from the cheek for a moment, he set aside his short knife and picked up a moderately curved gouging tool. He needed to remove more material from inside the skull before he could work properly on the eye sockets. It would not take long: his wrist twisted in curt, measured demi-rotations, flicking wood shavings out of the cavity onto his worktable at a rapid pace. The consistent speed, pressure, and length of his strokes were what had earned him his reputation as a master of efficiency and prolific creator in the Puppet Corps. Yet those weapons he had produced for his ungrateful colleagues were bundles of matchsticks compared to this. In those days, on a budget, he had been forced to work with the materials the Corps could afford: dull blades and frustratingly mediocre wood. On this project, unlike then, he had spared no expense on materials.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Selecting the right wood had been paramount. It needed to be close-grained, not porous. The pores of an open-grained wood would drink up the finish, leaving it bumpy and uneven like the face of some pockmarked ancient. Why should his body be riddled with disgusting imperfections when it could be smooth and flawless? Close-grained wood, once carved, carefully sanded and meticulously oiled would take the varnish in a smooth, mirror-like gloss.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The wood had to be durable, rot-resistant, insect-resistant and dense. If it was difficult to work with because of this, so be it. He had the tools, he had the time, and he would not rest until this job was done. The wood must not lose color when exposed to light or water or any other unfriendly element. He would take great care selecting ingredients for and mixing his finishes, when the time came—experiments were necessary before he could guarantee that no undesired reaction would occur between oil or alcohol in the finish and wood.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The wood he had chosen possessed a straight grain, so fine, so thin, so uniform in texture that the striations would be invisible save to the most discerning observer. The color was a pinkish cream; each block of wood hid a blushing, blooming rose. He worked with the natural ebb and flow of these hues, each piece of him pale where it would need to be pale, flushed where it needed color and life.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Life, spirit, soul… The glass eyes he had already cast himself. It would never have done to select premade parts, so he had spent several weeks learning how to work with glass to add coloring, and lay perfectly circular pupils and irises just-so within a milk-white orb. The coloring had taken days, and countless failed attempts.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He always let the eyes watch him work.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Flicking his gaze to them, his smile grew. The amber-like brown caught the dying sunset just right. Rays of sunlight tripped through his blinds, motes of dust floating lazily in and out of them. The relentless desert wind had inexplicably died out that afternoon, and he had indulged himself, cracking the window just a smidge to let in some sunlight and move the air. He usually preferred to work by lamplight, sealed off from the ever-present sandstorms and chattering villagers. But today… well, he’d seen how the eyes caught the sun. It was like falling in love for the first time again and again every time he looked at them. Those eyes held a beauty beyond compare. So he indulged himself, cracked open the window, and let the sunlight dance within them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Returning his attention to the cheek and eye socket, he used chakra strings to place the gouging tool back on the table and pluck up the short-bladed knife, the items moving simultaneously. He flicked the knife over the hole, shaving away material to create the space which would contain his eye. <em>Ice carves mountain from crown to toe, steady the blade which follows its flow:</em> the old puppet-maker’s adage, heard and recited dozens of times, surfaced in his mind as always, as usual, reminding him to remove wood from places ‘high’ in the grain first to prevent his blade from catching and damaging the piece.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The shape of the eye socket was difficult to capture. He lifted his gaze to the mirror once more. His breath caught: he never grew tired of studying this face. The shape of the lower eyelid was not constant—it changed from expression to expression, he had realized—and this had troubled him for weeks. Beneath his hands now were sheaves of drawings, eye socket after eye socket, each with a slightly different curve to it. Measurement after measurement he had made, taking a tiny ruler to measure the pink membranes, the width and height of them, the thickness of the eyelid, the angle of the skin below the rim where the eyeball would be cupped.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In the end he had decided that in addition to an upper eyelid, he would give the piece movable lower lids as well. If this worked—and it would, he knew it in his bones—he would have limitless control over every part of the body, even the hair if he wished. His “self” would exist as pure chakra, unbound by flesh-and-bone. Already he was adept at extending his chakra far beyond his human body, so once he was liberated from it, what difference would moving one more small joint make? Already it took less than a conscious thought for him to move things with chakra: raising and lowering lower eye lids would be as natural as breathing was for the fragile body he currently inhabited.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There. The socket size was just right. All it needed was a thorough sanding. He was tempted to begin work on its lower lid, sculpting a fragment of wood into just the right shape so it would nestle snugly into the socket, held in place by miniscule yet ingenious metal hinges—he had completed the specs for these joints last week and was proud of the original design—but he decided he would be better off completing the other eye socket first and working on the eyelids later.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But perhaps it was time for a break? He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, deeper, filling his lungs until they hurt with the sharp aroma of sun-warmed sawdust, knife-polishing compound and the not-entirely-unpleasant scent of his own human body. Placing his knife where it belonged, he brought his hands to his nose, smelling the wood, the oil, the sweat. Exhaling, he relaxed his muscles, rotating his shoulders and massaging his wrists.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Light was fading. As the sun slipped behind the city’s retaining wall, it held in its tight grasp all the warmth and life earlier kindled in his perfect glass eyes, pulling that glow down, down, down after it, holding it ransom until tomorrow’s dawn. He watched that light fade, his face impassive, withholding emotion, then stood, body chilled as if the room’s temperature had already dropped several degrees like it would on a deep desert night.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>His body needed food, water and sleep. His mind was restless. It ticked through unfinished tasks, minutiae, supplies to procure, to create, everything executed in precise order. Nothing could be left out. Everything had to be perfect.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He found himself standing in front of the set of full-length mirrors he’d arranged in one corner of the workshop, positioned so he could view himself from all angles. The light had truly faded by now and he had not yet lit a lamp; in the twilit room, he was a shadow creature, his paleness obscured, save where dim light reflected off the mirrors from the window and highlighted his edges. That cheekbone, those fingers. He stepped closer to the mirror, a small, coy step as if approaching a lover. Beneath his loose robe he wore nothing; his feet were bare. He slipped his robe off one shoulder, allowing the dome of his shoulder and rise of his collarbone to soak up twilight and shadow, emanating soft light like the surface of the moon. He lifted his hand to caress that exposed skin, shadow-fingers cool against the warm muscles of his upper arm. He had already measured every bulge and depression of this landscape, but his lips parted in pleasure to traverse it once more.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Discovering that he had closed his eyes, he snapped them open and again stepped closer to the mirror. He placed his hand on the glass, sucking in a breath at its biting coolness. His heartrate had risen; he felt his cheeks flush. But in the darkness now, his face was obscured, his eyes nothing but two pricks of light reflected from the mirror.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He cast out a chakra string and whipped alight a match from the box on his worktable. Without turning his head—indeed, his eyes were closed as he manipulated his chakra—he brought the flame to the wick of his lamp and called the lamp to his hand. It was an old-fashioned oil lamp, crafted of heavy clay, a single wick extending from the tiny hole in its tapered nozzle, oil swilling within its belly. As he cupped it in his palm, the lamp body grew warm from the fire’s heat.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This time when he looked into the mirror, his eyes burned with life, pupils contracting at the sudden flood of light, sclera bloodshot, all those shades of brown dancing in the lamp’s flickering flame. Beautiful. And yet imperfect. Aging.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Well, he would put a stop to that.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He smiled in the lamplight, watched the expression as it blossomed in the mirror: first the curling corners of the mouth, then teeth, then laughter, his joy amplifying…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Yes, his life’s work, his masterpiece, his perfect, immortal body… Not one second he spent on this work was a waste of his time. Nothing would ever bring him greater satisfaction than its completion.</p>
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